Nuclear reactor health physics

Abstract

The discovery of fission in 1938 provided the basis of a new source of energy potentially greater than the entire world reserves of fossil fuels. The first fission reactor was operated in a converted squash court in Chicago in 1942 by Enrico Fermi and this was followed by a rapid development of nuclear power plants in the 1960s and 1970s. Although this slowed down in the 1980s and early 1990s, nuclear energy now supplies a significant fraction of the power requirements of most of the advanced countries of the world. The advantages of the nuclear reactor as a source of power are offset to some extent by a number of special problems. These include:

• 1. The protection of the operator and maintainer.

• 2. The safe treatment and disposal or storage of the radioactivity produced.

• 3. The need to achieve an acceptably low risk of injury to the public because of potential large releases of radioactivity in the event of a reactor accident.